


though his ways are hard and steep

by xpityx



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Child Death (Non-Graphic), Dean/Cas Big Bang Challenge, Dean/Cas Big Bang Challenge 2018, F/M, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 17:28:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16539044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xpityx/pseuds/xpityx
Summary: Eight years ago Castiel did something unforgivable. Now he’s back in Dean’s life and Dean has no idea how to move past it.Castiel knows he can’t have both Heaven and Dean: that he has to make a choice.





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU from mid-way through Season 9 (pre-Mark of Cain, restored Angel!Castiel returned to Heaven, *hand waves* Abaddon dead, Crowley in Hell...) 
> 
> It’s been a while since I saw canon, so…
> 
> First thanks go to my artist, oubliette-od, who has made THE MOST AMAZING ART for this fic. Both pieces are at the end of the fic to avoid vague spoilers, and their masterpost on Tumblr is here. Please give them all the love cause they have been awesome and a delight to work with ^^
> 
> Thank you of course to my long-suffering beta, SlumberousTrash who did something like 200 corrections on her read through of this, and to my babe urcadelimabean for her enthusiastic cheerleading. 
> 
> Annnd last but not least, the amazing DCBB mods who worked so tirelessly to make this whole thing happen.

 

[image description: header designed by oubliette_od with story title across a background of stars]

 

**Part I**

 

Dean first became an uncle eight years ago, on January 12th at 6:26am. He was Uncle Dean for six hours and four minutes.

 

Matthew Menahem Winchester had been diagnosed in the womb with an combination of severe heart defects, but Aliza had wanted to carry him to term and Sam had agreed. Dean had been convinced that one of the names of the syndromes reminded him of something he’d heard in a spell, too much time around Latin he guessed, and had spent a solid fortnight looking for the damn thing, sure that if he could find it he could answer a question he couldn’t even fucking articulate. He’d prayed a lot too, with about as much success.

 

The Centrepoint's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit was as cheery as it could be, with pale pink walls and a view of stripped winter trees out of the large windows. There were about twenty pod-like cots, and most of the babies in there wore tiny knitted hats which looked like they had been donated by someone’s colourblind grandparents. Matthew had been wearing a doll-sized lime green one when Dean had held him, and more tubes that he would have thought possible led from under the band around his waist to a bank of quietly beeping machines. He was so small and warm, it was like holding a tiny hot water bottle against his chest. His eyes were closed but he waved his arms and legs a little, his feet beating softly against Dean’s bare forearm. Dean had thought suddenly of the finger painting he’d done as a kid. Maybe he could paint the bottom of Matthew’s feet and then he could carry the marks of where he had held him on his arm. Maybe it would make it more bearable when he had to let him go. He’d looked up after about ten minutes of just staring at his nephew, expecting to be asked to hand him back, but both Sam and Aliza had just smiled at him and told him to take as long as he liked. He’d held him for an hour, and that had been it. Four hours later Matthew had quietly slipped away, held in his mother’s arms.

 

Dean had never, _would never_ forgive Cas for that.

 

-

 

Sam and Aliza, or ‘Samiza’ as Dean had taken to calling them shortly after they’d gotten together, had met on a hunt. A Professor in Pharmacology working out of Kansas City University, she had a PhD in Ethnopharmacology and had helped them come up with an actual antidote to the poison of a _Gu_ spirit that had somehow found itself in the Midwest instead of, say, 2nd century China where it belonged.

 

Not, of course, until after Dean had managed to break his collarbone. He’d always thought it wouldn’t be too bad a bone to break but holy fuck it had been painful. He’d genuinely thought he was going to pass out at the time, something that usually only happened when he’d lost more than a couple of pints of blood. So it was eight weeks of Dr Sexy and bad porn for him.  Aliza’s antidote had meant that the spirit had been drained of its power so Sam was able to finish the job alone. He’d last seen them in the local library, discussing whether or not poltergeists were less common in cultures where cremation was rare and when he’d woken up the next day they’d declared their eternal love and moved in together. Well, it hadn’t been quite that fast, but it had seemed the way to Dean, stuck alone in the bunker for days on end.

 

She'd been polite but kinda quiet at first; Dean had been convinced she hated him and had said as much to Sammy. It had eventually dawned on him though that she wasn't dislike-distant with him, it was just the awkward distance of two people who didn't know each other very well. The realisation hadn't helped: how the fuck did you _get to know_ someone anyhow? It wasn't something he'd had to do beyond the superficial level required for hooking up for, well, possibly ever. Either people crash landed in his life, usually covered in blood or ectoplasm and needing his help, or they were just passers-by. Except for Cas. He’d gotten to know Cas the slow way.

 

He’d made more of an effort after that particularly sad epiphany, which was how he’d ended up at a kosher BBQ festival later that year. Sam had tried to ban him from telling any jokes to anyone beforehand, but he’d told his vegan joke to Aliza’s Rabbi and he’d snorted half his drink he’d laughed so hard, so it couldn’t have gone that badly. He and Aliza didn’t have much in common except Sam at first, but he’d been surprised that that was enough. Grief as well after Matthew, he guessed, but he didn’t pretend to understand what Sam and Aliza had gone through after their son’s death.

 

Leah Deanna Winchester had been born two years later, and she’d been the sweetest, most quiet baby in the world. Sam and Aliza maintain that Dean was delusional and that she’d spent the first eight months not sleeping and throwing up every time she fed, but Dean didn’t remember it like that. He’d been the first person she’d smiled at. She’d only been a month and a half old, which the internet had told him was pretty early to be smiling. He’d found himself telling a few women in bars about it, but had had to stop because it didn’t seem to be doing him any favours in the getting laid category. Not that he did much of that anymore. His job was to teach Leah how to look after herself and make sure that the bunker was safe enough for her to inherit it, so that’s what he did with himself. There were still hunts and he drove up to help Jody and her girls as often as he could get away with. They didn’t need him most of the time, but they let him pretend he was being useful and he was grateful as fuck for it.

 

He cleared a room of the bunker a week, on average. He babysat three days a week whilst Sam and Aliza were at work, and went up to Fairmont to have dinner every Friday unless he was on a hunt. Sam still came with him when it was a two-person job, but more and more they sent tips to other hunters when they came across something big. Dean would never be the reason Aliza had to sit shiva for Sam. He’d promised himself that.

 

He didn’t often think about it as a whole, but when he did he was happy with what he had. It was a little quiet in the bunker sometimes, but Leah was there Monday through to Wednesday, so it was never quiet for long. He used the money Bobby left him for petrol and food money, but he’d have to start thinking of a steady income stream at some point. Not yet though, for now he had enough to keep himself occupied.

 

-

 

Fairmont was a brutal, two hour commute in the rush hour traffic from Kansas City University, but it had been all they’d been able to afford. Dean knew Sam felt like shit for being able to put so little towards the deposit, but Aliza’d had a neat apartment close to Kansas City that had covered most of it. Aliza’s parents had offered to help as well, naturally having fallen in love with their gigantic son-in-law, but Sam had been mortified enough without their help. Sam worked two days a week at a nearby public library for minimum wage, whilst taking an online degree in Library Science. Dean had gone to ask him a couple of times if he’d wanted to finish his law degree, but had been too chicken shit in the end to bring up the subject.

 

The Impala could make Lebanon to Fairmont in a just under two hours, so it was never any hassle to drive down on a Friday to spend some time with the Winchester-Senesh family. Plus, Dean was Aliza’s mom’s favourite, so she’d usually sent over some apple fritters for him. At this rate he might actually start having to exercise, although he’d never tell Sam or Aliza that.

 

He had just about enough time to open the door and shout a greeting before Leah came bounding down the stairs yelling, “Uncle Dean!” at the top of her lungs. Six years old, with Sam’s hair but Aliza’s everything else, she was cute, loud, and occasionally weirdly insightful. He’d started learning Hebrew when she’d first been born, but he’d never got much further than memorising The Shema so he could help her with her prayers when she stayed at the bunker. Sam was nearly fluent, but Dean enjoyed the fuck out of Aliza’s occasional mocking of his pronunciation.

 

Leah reached the last step and launched herself into Dean. He groaned theatrically and fell backwards onto the floor, Leah cackling the semi-cute, semi-evil laugh she’d inherited from her mother the whole time. Thankfully, there was a seriously fluffy rug to fall onto. Dean was a little too old to be swan diving around but fuck it - it made Leah laugh so it was a win.

 

He was probably so popular because he always bought her her favourite candy, but he was willing to take whatever he could get.

 

“Dean, why are you on the floor?” Aliza was stood over him, looking more than a little puzzled.

 

“I pushed him, mama!” Leah shouted, obviously delighted with the chaos she’d caused.

 

“I’m not sure that’s a good thing, my kitten, let’s let Uncle Dean up shall we?”

 

Rescued from a Leah monster, he joined Sam and Aliza in the kitchen, where Sam was wrestling with a bottle of wine. Getting a cap off a beer bottle was no problem for a Winchester - hell, Dean had learnt the trick of using his teeth when he was 16, until he’d chipped a tooth and Dad had flipped his shit - but corks were apparently beyond Sam’s skillset. Sam cursed in a variety of dead languages as the cork gave up and disintegrated into the wine, Aliza and Dean making no secret of their amusement. Thankfully Dean was sticking to his one beer, but he enjoyed watching the two of them have to spit out the odd bit of cork the whole evening. There was a general ban of supernatural-talk in the same vicinity as Leah, but Dean still managed to freak everyone out by telling them about the huge cockroach that had appeared in the bunker bathroom a few days ago. Dean had decided to deal with it after his shower and coffee, but it had somehow crawled onto his towel by the time he’d finished showering. A fact he only realised _after_ he’d started drying himself off. Basically, he’d started his day by smushing a cockroach against his leg. He’d screamed holy hell when he’d done it - he left that part out of the story - but Sam was laughing like he knew anyway.

 

Leah insisted on Dean reading her a bedtime story so he stayed later than he usually did. There was something warm about their house that made it a little sad to return to the bunker on a Friday night, especially in winter or autumn. Sometimes he even hit a local bar when he got back to Lebanon, just for a bit of company. He was due to clear out one of the basement rooms over the weekend though, so he just fell into bed that evening, not even bothering to brush his teeth.

 

-

 

He’d promised Sam that he wouldn’t go poking into the lower levels of the storerooms by himself, but fuck it: it was his bunker now and if he wanted to have a couple of beers and look at some fertility statues from when-fucking-ever then that’s what he was going to do. He’d gotten pretty good at being able to tell which boxes contained useful shit and which contained shit that probably would be safer at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. He’d been gradually working his way through the storerooms for the better part of a year, and had only had to call Sam in a few times when he’d come across stuff that was definitely out of his league. See: ‘perfectly preserved corpse in a velvet bag incident’ and ‘box containing dried monkey balls that set itself on fire’ for reference. A couple of times he’d even surprised Sammy with some random piece of arcane law he’d picked up from trying to identify if a certain relic was going to get up and start gnawing on his ankles or something. Whatever, it was better than watching TV all day at any rate, and Leah was going to be a Woman of Letters someday, so he needed to make sure the bunker was safe for her. He had not yet explained this plan to either of her parents, but he reckoned he had at least ten years before she was old enough to use a gun, which was plenty of time to talk them round to the idea.

 

“I would not touch that. It is made from a highly toxic plant.”

 

Dean looked at where his hand hovered an inch above the woven basket he had been about to pick up and wondered if he was having a psychotic break. Fuck knows he was due one. The bunker was so heavily warded that is was basically impossible for any ghost or ghoul to wander in, and for the more human would-be-trespassers there was a eight inch thick blast door to contend with. An angel could get in perhaps, especially one with prior knowledge of the bunker’s location, but that was also impossible: not after eight years and no word.

 

The unmistakable voice came again from behind him.

 

“It is me, Castiel.”

 

Dean stayed exactly where he was, barely even breathing, too chicken shit to look and find no-one there.

 

“Have you forgotten me?” the voice continued.

 

He turned slowly then, half expecting the world to tilt into madness as he did so. Or perhaps it had, and that was why Cas was stood in the doorway to the storeroom, back ramrod straight, wrapped in his familiar trench coat.

 

Dean open his mouth, closed it, then let out a sound that was almost a laugh.

 

“Did _I_ forget _you_? Did I…?” He gestured helplessly, as Cas took a step into the room, concern on his face.

 

“Dean?”

 

God, it was too much. He’d told himself that Cas was dead. That Heaven had closed its doors forever. Anything apart from this: that he just hadn’t come when Dean had prayed. And yet despite it all he wanted to pull him closer, to put his hands on that stupid coat and prove that Cas really was there. He pressed the tips of his fingers over his closed eyes until light and dark bloomed under his eyelids and the pain proved he was awake. Warm hands covered his and pulled his hands down to his sides.

 

“You’re hurting yourself.”

 

Dear God in Heaven, he even sounded _concerned_. Dean was burning up, some emotion he couldn’t name boiling over from where he kept everything locked up tight. He rested his forehead on Cas’s shoulder, just for a second. He smelt exactly the same, like growing things and warmth. Cas was still holding onto his hands and either he or Cas was shaking, he couldn’t tell which. He breathed raggedly, he just needed a moment and then he would be angry, he would shout: he just needed his best friend to hold him up for a little while first.

 

-

 

He didn’t ask. He was damn well going to, he owed Sam and Aliza that much at least, but… not yet. He couldn’t face Cas saying yes. Yes he’d heard Dean praying, _begging_. Yes he’d let Matthew die in his parents’ arms having never even opened his eyes. So instead he sat with Cas in the war room, the solid oak table between them.

 

“It’s been eight years, Cas, where have you been?”

 

 _W_ _hy didn’t you answer me?_

 

Cas shifted, perhaps a little uncomfortable to be back in his vessel.

 

“There was much to discuss with the other angels, and a lot of damage to set right. Time is... it does not flow as such in Heaven.”

 

There was a silence then that Dean struggled to find his way out of. How did conversations usually happen? How did conversations with _Cas_ usually happen? There had always been a crisis to fill in the gaps between Dean’s lack of social niceties before, but all he had to offer right now was either a beer or eight years of missing a nephew he had never gotten a chance to know.

 

He went for the beer.

 

Cas sipped his carefully and avoided meeting Dean’s eyes. Well, at least he wasn’t the only one fucking this up.

 

“Dean-”

 

“Cas-”

 

Cas swallowed and looked down at his beer bottle as he rolled it carefully back and forth between his hands. It was such a human thing to do that it Dean almost missed it when he began to speak.

 

“I thought on all the horror I brought on the world, on you, by being here, and felt that my true place was in Heaven.”

 

“Then why did you come back?”

 

“I missed you.”

 

Dean rocked back in his chair as if struck. Cas had moved mountains for him, had pulled him from Hell, remade his body, given up an army for him, but he had never stated it so plainly.

 

Cas stood and put his untouched beer on the table. Dean stared up at him, unable to say any of the thousand thoughts that were crowded at the back of his throat.

 

“I am glad to find you well. I will come back soon.” He placed an awkward hand on Dean’s shoulder for a second before blinking out of existence.

 

Dean drank both beers then went to get the whisky.

 

-

 

The thing was, Cas did come back.

 

The first time was less than a week later - he just showed up while Dean was watching TV and stayed for a couple of episodes of Buffy. Dean looked over when the credits rolled on the third episode, but Cas was gone again. The next time he helped clear out one of the dungeons, even going so far as disappearing a few of the more dangerous artefacts into the centre of the sun - which: _what_ _the fuck?_ There seemed to be no rhyme or reason as to when he appeared, and Dean tried to talk himself out of being disappointed when he went for days without seeing him.

 

Dean hadn’t asked about Matthew. He told himself that each time Cas turned up would be the last, and that there was no need to confront him about, well, anything, because they would likely never see each other again.

 

It worked pretty well, right up until the moment Cas kissed him, about a month after he’d first returned.

 

“Wait, Cas - what are you...?”

 

Cas leaned back, but kept his hands curled into the front of his ACDC t-shirt. Sam had bought it for him, Dean thought, somewhat hysterically.

 

“You wanted to. I could hear you thinking about it.”

 

_Jesus fuck._

 

“Yeah, I,” Dean swallowed hard but didn’t move away, “I do that sometimes. But you. Before, you never…”

 

“I wanted to as well,” Cas replied, like that decided it, and then he was kissing Dean again, moving his hands down Dean’s front to rest on his sides. Dean let himself be backed up until he hit the wall, then Cas had a leg between his and just like that Dean was on fire. He rolled his hips forward and moaned at the contact. Cas put his hand into his hair and tugged hard so Dean was forced to arch his neck. Fuck, how did he know to do that?

 

“It is difficult _not_ to read your thoughts when you are this close.” And with that terrible declaration Cas bit down hard into the meat of his shoulder and shoved his hand down the front of Dean’s sweats.

 

It was quick and messy, and afterwards Cas herded Dean into his room and into bed, where he curled around him, running his hands through his hair. Dean felt something welling up inside him and realised to his horror that he was on the edge of tears. He felt flayed open, knowing that Cas could see and had probably always been able to see his small human desires.

 

“Shhh, all is well. I know you just as well now as I always have.” Cas pressed a kiss to the back of his head, never ceasing the motion of his hands. Dean gave in and allowed himself to be soothed into sleep. On the very edge, just as the world had started to dissolve a little, he had one clear thought: _don’t let this be a dream_. Whether or not Cas had heard him was yet another thing he didn’t want to consider but when he awoke a few hours later, he was alone.

 

-

 

In all honestly, he’d been lonely. The person he spoke to most was a six year old and granted, she was a seriously smart six year old, but it wasn’t quite the same thing. He’d thought he’d be fine, him and Sam had spent untold years in each other’s company and they hadn’t exactly talked each other’s ears off in that time, but they’d shared space, and that apparently was something he needed.

 

Cas had been seemingly immune to Dean’s need for him to stay before, but he was definitely making the effort now. He often stayed the whole night through, doing the creepy but also kinda comforting watching-Dean-sleep thing. He let Dean show him all the Star Wars movies, and sat through Dean’s ‘“Han shot first” best shows the moral ambiguity of his character and therefore deepens the significance of his transition to a hero’ speech with every appearance of interest. He ate Dean’s cooking, drank his beer, and fucked him into the mattress.

 

Dean, for his part, felt like he was living one second to another. He couldn’t make himself consider the future consequences of what they were doing, and he equally couldn’t look to the past. By unspoken agreement, Cas winged off back to heaven for the three days Leah was at the Bunker, but he appeared the second Sam’s car had disappeared down the track and sucked Dean off in the kitchen.

 

He didn’t know whether to be grateful or to cry. And he was still too chickenshit to ask what he needed to ask. He’d meant to the second Sam had left, in fact, he’d been so fucking nice to his little brother that Sam had asked if Dean was feeling OK, for fuck’s sake.

 

“How’s things?”

 

Cas looked at Dean with perfect incomprehension and Dean winced to himself a little.

 

“I mean, in Heaven, how are things in Heaven?”

 

“Well. Thank you for asking.”

 

“Was, er, everything sorted after purgatory?”

 

“Yes, there is less of a rigid hierarchy now so as to prevent any one Angel gaining too much power. Angels, however, have little understanding of choice, but I imagine in another million years or so they will settle into it somewhat.”

 

“A _million years_?”

 

“Yes.”

 

There was a pause and Dean wondered if this was the right time. Should he say something now? He’d promised himself after seeing Sam that he’d ask. He swallowed, not even sure what was going to come out of his mouth.

 

“Dean, can we could watch another episode of Breaking Bad this evening? I would like to know how Skylar reacts to the news of her husband’s new business venture.”

 

“Er, sure,” Dean replied, on autopilot, still half braced to say Matthew’s name.

 

“Have you considered cooking meth? It seems to be a lucrative business, and you already own a hazmat suit.”

 

“A: I only own one because Sam insisted we needed it for an exploding monster job and B: no, it’s very illegal.”

 

“As is credit card fraud.”

 

Dean looked over to make sure this wasn’t Cas fucking with him, but no, he looked genuinely confused.

 

“OK, let me break down why cooking meth is a bad idea as a life choice…”

 

He was playing house with Leah the following week when it occurred to him to wonder if Cas had deliberately changed the subject.

 

-

 

Cas never asked about Sam. Or Leah or Aliza. He hadn’t met Leah or Aliza of course, but he had to know about them otherwise he wouldn’t make himself scarce when he was babysitting or when he went to Fairmont for dinner on a Friday night. Dean managed to be angry for about five minutes over Cas’s lack of interest until he remembered that he was avoiding the subject too. He felt like he had a jagged crack through him. It reminded him of how he’d kept Benny apart from Sam at first, like there was this side of him that had hunted in Purgatory with with a vampire at his side, and then there was topside Dean who flirted with waitresses and had a kid brother. Only this was worse, because as much as Benny had been a friend, and fuck he’d been a good friend, he wasn’t betraying his family the way he was with Cas. He knew it, he’d known it from the moment Cas had appeared in the bunker the first time. He just wished he knew how to stop.

 

Why now? He wanted to ask. Why after all this time? They could have been doing whatever they were doing before all of this. If Cas had always known about Dean, then why had he waited until now to fucking do something about it? Was it just guilt? Maybe this was Cas’ fucked up way of making up for Matthew’s death: give Dean something he wanted cause he hadn’t given him the thing he’d asked for. Begged for, even.

 

Dean shook his head at himself. No, Cas would never do that - he’d saved Dean, he’d given up an army for him, turned his back on Heaven for him. Still, he didn’t sleep well that night, nor the next, but then Cas was back and he put his questions out of his mind.

 

-

 

“Fuck, yes, like that.” He bucked up against Cas’s hand, where he was carefully sliding two oiled fingers in and out of his ass. He scissored his fingers again, and Dean groaned. He was sweating, he could feel how damp his hair was at the back of his neck. Cas was sat between his legs, naked, the full weight of his attention on the place where he was pushing his fingers into Dean’s body. He’d been fingering him for what felt like hours, but was probably more like twenty minutes, and Dean was on the verge of begging for him to put his cock in him. Cas must have read his mind, he must have known that Dean didn’t want to beg, not for this, and he removed his fingers and carefully pushed into him. Once Cas was fully seated they lay there panting for a while, Cas easily holding Dean’s hips up with one hand, the other planted at his shoulder. The strength of him alone made Dean shudder with want. Cas began to thrust then, careful where Dean would have preferred him to be rough.

 

“I will not punish you for what you want, Dean,” he said lowly before bending forward enough to kiss him lightly. Dean grimaced a little at the stretch in his legs, but he wasn’t sure it wasn’t better than the hot lamp of Cas’ attention when he leaned back. He turned his head to one side and closed his eyes as pleasure began to pool in his stomach. Fuck it felt so good. He held off as long as he could, but his stamina was not so hot when the dude who was fucking him happened to be psychic.

 

Cas mojoed the mess away after, and Dean tried to get his breath back. Perhaps it was time to start doing some exercise.

 

“Yes. Many men of your age find benefit from regular cardiovascular exercise.”

 

Dean raised an eyebrow without opening his eyes. He could _feel_ Cas looking shifty.

 

“I found an interesting book on health in the library. I think perhaps you should also consider eating fewer donuts.”

 

Dean opened his eyes at that, offended on behalf of his awesome diet. “What do you mean, ‘fewer donuts’? I eat one a week, how could I eat less?”

 

It was Cas’s turn to raise an eyebrow, although it was less intimidating when he was naked and looked like he’d been dragged through a bush backwards.

 

“Dean, you eat, on average, four donuts a week. Meaning some weeks you eat one a day.”

 

He scowled, not wanting to concede the point. Also, they were tiny so he’d been rounding up.

 

“So you have a point?” he asked, testilly.

 

“Yes,” Cas looked confused, “my point was that you would benefit from more exercise. I thought I had made that clear.”

 

“Cas, I think this comes under ‘things you should not say to the dude you’re lying naked in bed with’.”

 

Cas looked at him with the intense focus he reserved for particularly glaring plot holes and reading Dean’s mind.

 

“Dean, there are depictions of the perfection of humans in holy places that do not do justice to your beauty.”

 

“Jeez Cas…” He could feel himself blushing, but apparently Cas wasn’t finished.

 

“However your arteries look like a partially blocked sewer.”

 

Dean stared at him for a moment before picking up a nearby pillow and shoving it in his face.

 

-

 

He pulled a statue of a naked dude holding a spear and wearing a very spiky hat out of the chest. It was much heavier than he thought it would be, and he judged its use as a weapon in a pinch: he reckoned he could throw it in such a way it would land spiky-end first.

 

“What do you think this is?”

 

He had been sorting through a wooden chest he’d discovered under one of the end tables near the second lowest basement when Cas had appeared. He’d seemed happy to get stuck in and they’d mostly been working in companionable silence.

 

“It a statue of last Emperor of Byzantium. I think it’s from around the time of the Fall of the Constantinople,” Cas replied, without looking up from the sheaf of papers he was examining.

 

“Huh, valuable then?”

 

“Very, I imagine. Although, it is cursed so perhaps you should not be selling it to the highest bidder.”

 

Dean carefully put it down. It was more than likely that Cas wouldn’t have let him pick it up if the curse was activated by touch, but, well, he wasn’t going to test that theory any further.

 

“How many angels can dance on a pin,” Cas said, seemingly to himself.

 

Dean looked at him for a moment to see if an explanation for the more-than-usual-levels of randomness was forthcoming, but Cas just turned to a new page.

 

“Er, excuse me?”

 

Cas looked up. “The fall of Constantinople. Legend has it that that is what monks were debating while the city burned.” He then went back to his reading, as if that explained everything.

 

“So, how many?” Dean asked.

 

Cas graced him with his attention again, “How many what?”

 

He swore to god or whoever, that at least half the time Cas was trolling him.

 

“How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” he gritted out.

 

“That depends on the size of the pin, Dean,” Cas replied and then, perhaps sensing that Dean was on the verge of picking up the statue again and bludgeoning Cas to death with it, he added, “but I think one Angel per molecule would be an accurate guess.”

 

“Wait, I thought your true form was massive?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Dean stared.

 

Cas face said that his lack of immediate understanding was a personal insult, “Angels have existed since before the concept of space and time, so to attempt to understand my true form in those terms is an impossibility.”

 

Dean just continued to look at him.

 

Cas seemed to come to some sort of decision. “Close your eyes, I want to show you something”. He put down his papers and seemed to stand a little taller.

 

“...What?” Dean asked, not sure he’d heard that right.

 

Cas sighed, his ‘why do I put up with the stupidity of Winchesters?’ sigh, stepped forward and pressed his hand firmly over Dean’s heart.

 

-

 

He opened his eyes into a strange, comfortable twilight - like the space between awake and asleep. There was a faint light that seemed to come from everywhere at once, and every so often he caught an odd, uneven glimpse of thousands of stars just beyond the horizon, as if the darkness he stood in was spinning slowly within a further night.

 

“Cas?” he called, uncertain. He and Cas had been talking, hadn’t they? About… dancing angels? No, that didn’t sound right.

 

“Cas?” he tried again, little louder.

 

“Yes, Dean.”

 

The voice echoed inside him, feeling like the heavy bass of a club that had never heard of noise regulations.

 

“Where are you buddy?”

 

“I'm here, Dean.”

 

Oh gods, he was _inside Cas_. And not in the sweaty, sexy way.

 

“What the _fuck,_ Cas?”

 

“You were having difficulty imaging my true form. I thought this might help.”

 

“OK. New rule: you need to ask for permission _before_ you magic someone inside your massive angelic body.”

 

“That seems like a very specific rule.”

 

Dean rolled his eyes internally. There was no need to waste energy actually rolling his eyes as there was no way Cas couldn’t read his mind when he was stood _inside_ of him. Sometimes his life was really really odd.

 

Wherever he was, well, standing, for lack of any other word, seemed to be at the centre: alternate stars and darkness stretched outwards, and he could faintly hear what sounded like the boom of the sea on a distant shore.

 

It was certainly impressive, but he wasn’t about to say that out loud.

 

“Pretty cool,” he commented, as offhandedly as he could.

 

“I’m glad you think so, Dean.” And Cas sounded so genuinely grateful for the meagre compliment that Dean felt like a tool for not saying what he really thought, but Cas was speaking again before he had the chance to try and do something about it.

 

“Would you like to hear more about the fall of Constantinople?” Cas asked, a little tentative.

 

Dean looked around him before sitting down on the… well, on the surface he’d been stood on. It was soft and seemed to absorb light.

 

“Sure, Cas, I’d love to,” he replied.

 

So Cas began to tell him about the last Emperor of Byzantium, and the legends that had grown from the rubble of the city: that angels had turned the Emperor into stone; that a holy light had pierced the clouds as the host had returned to heaven; and that the Emperor slumbered still beneath the city. Dean didn’t ask if they were true or not, and Cas didn’t offer clarification. He only said that he was there, and that he had seen the great city fall.

 

-

 

In retrospect, watching the final of Buffy season 5 with Cas had been a mistake.

 

“I did not know. How could I have not have seen that she would have to sacrifice herself in order for her sister to live?”

 

“It’s OK, buddy - the first time I watched it that bit blindsided me too.”

 

“But Dean, I have seen countless tragedies, both real and imagined: from plays put on by becalmed sailors as the waited for wind in their sails; to the greats of the literary world hunched over their pen and paper, words flowing from their minds into ink. I should have known that Dawn and Buffy were made of the same flesh, that as Dawn was the Key: Buffy was Pandora’s Lock.”

 

Dean was half embarrassed on Cas’ behalf that he was taking some trashy TV show so seriously, and half pleased to have someone to talk to about the central themes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

 

“So, I take it you want to start season 6?”

 

“I’m not sure Dean. How can the series continue without Buffy?”

 

He was struck then, as he was at odd times, by a memory: the dark of the lounge in Sam and Aliza’s house; Aliza taking his hand as they sat shiva together silently, wondering what they were going to do at the end of the seven days. How they would all get up and carry on. Suddenly he was angry. Furious. That Cas had been emotionally affected by a fucking character in a fucking TV show but he hadn’t...

 

“Dean.”

 

He couldn’t even turn his head to look at him. He felt like he’d been turned to stone. Then there was the familiar rush of great, invisible wings beating the air and Cas was gone.

 

Dean sighed explosively and put his head in his hands. He couldn’t keep doing this.

 

-

 

A month went by. He'd gotten pretty good at distracting himself from things that were probably not a good idea to dwell on. It had been hard when Sam had first moved out so he'd started to keep a list of things he could do to keep him from, well, getting drunk by himself in a dark, subterranean bunker, for one. He usually cooked, trying new recipes at a rate of one per week, or painstakingly attempted to improve his Hebrew, but this time he threw himself into finding a job. He canvassed local car shops, then further and further afield as they all told him the same thing: he needed a degree before they’d even consider him. Why the fuck did he need a fucking degree to fix cars? The last time he’d been out looking, at some tiny place a whole state over, he’d gotten pissy with the guy. Told him to look at his fucking car. He didn’t need a degree to rebuild a fucking ‘67 Impala, so why did he need one to work at some rinky-dink car shop. The guy had given him a pitying look and gone back into the shop rather than reply, and Dean had left about a third of his wheel rubber in the parking lot.

He had gotten drunk a couple of times, in the end. He’d even gone home with someone he’d met at one of the bars on the outskirts of town. A woman, simply because the thought of going home with a man who wasn’t Cas turned his stomach. Zoey. It’d been pretty good, and she’d obviously been thoroughly uninterested in anything beyond a one night stand so they hadn’t had to do the awkward, insincere ‘let’s do this again sometime’ dance in the morning.

 

He’d almost been in a good mood when he got back to the bunker, thinking about frying some bacon for a late breakfast when he walked down the corridor towards his room to find Cas there. They stood looking at each other for a moment.

 

Dean opened his mouth to say, well he didn’t know what, when Cas surged forward and kissed him. He was helpless to do anything but kiss him back, panting as Cas gripped his hair to pull his head back and bite his neck.

 

“ _Fuck._ ”

 

Cas had his belt open and dropped to his knees, mouthing wetly as his rapidly hardening cock through his boxers. Dean leaned against the nearest wall and held on as Cas freed his cock and swallowed him down. God it was so much better than any other sex he’d ever had. The fact that it was Cas: Castiel, Angel of the Lord, who had pulled him apart and put him back together so many times he didn’t even know where to start counting from. Cas, who was letting Dean fuck his mouth, rough and sloppy, while he palmed his own cock through his slacks.

 

He lasted maybe eight minutes, moaning through his teeth as he came. Then Cas was getting carefully to his feet, his clothes smoothed out and face unblemished, leaving Dean to dress himself again, his movements sharp with anger.

 

“What the fuck was that?” He asked harshly once he had some semblance of dignity again. He was so fucking mad he wasn’t sure where to direct it: at Cas for doing this to him or at himself for taking it when it was offered. He couldn’t even keep it in his pants for thirty fucking seconds.

 

“You’re still angry,” Cas stated, flat.

 

“Of course I’m still fucking angry!” Dean threw out his arms in disbelief. “You got upset over a TV show! A FUCKING TV SHOW! You let Matthew DIE, and you fucking dare to be upset over some made up shit!”

 

Cas looked away. “You still think me without feeling, after all I have done for you, after all that has passed between us.”

 

“All that you’ve done for me? You let my nephew die, my brother’s son, held in his mother’s arms, and you want me to be grateful for _all that_ _you’ve done_? Fuck you. You’re a million years old, what the fuck do you even understand about emotions?”  
  
Cas strode forward into his personal space, his calm gone and his face twisted in anger. “Did you think,” he spat, “that when I saw Achilles pull his lover’s rotting corpse into his arms and plead for one more moment with him that I was not moved? That when Lot’s wife turned in grief for her city that I felt no regret? _Do you think that I did not hear your prayers?_ ”

 

The lightbulb overhead burst in a shower of glass and light, but Dean paid it no mind. “So why didn’t you save him?” he shouted, voice wavering. “Why didn’t you save my nephew?”

 

“Why should I have done this thing? Why should I have saved this one babe when so many die each minute, each second? I watched Bathsheba mourn as her son died by inches, I witnessed Joan of Arc, beloved of God, consumed by flames and I did _nothing!_ Who are you that should I have moved the world for this one child? I am over _four billion years old_ , and when the sun reaches out and engulfs the Earth nine billion years from now, _I_ will be there to witness it. Why then should I meddle in the affairs of one human?”

 

“Because you have done it before!” That was the point that Dean could never get over. “Because you love me.”

 

Cas was a statue. In the stillness the glass from the shattered bulb flew up into the air and coalesced to reform the bulb, but the light remained out so they stood in the semi-twilight.

 

“Yes, yes, I do,” Cas admitted, softly. “And what good has it done us - all the terrible things you and I have done in the name of love  - what good has it done the world?”

 

Dean didn’t have any answer for that though, so he turned away as he felt the inevitable beat of wings as Cas vanished back to Heaven.

 

-

 

A week later and he was back in Fairmont, regretting his decision to come clean to his brother. After Cas left he’d spent most of the first two days drunk, only leaving the bunker for more alcohol and a Chinese takeaway in a vague attempt not to die of alcohol poisoning. The guy behind the counter in the liquor store had given him a long look when he’d gone in to pick up some cheap Mellow Corn whisky, so fuck knew how worse for wear he must have been. He’d managed to sober up by Friday morning, and had spend most of the day lying on his bed and trying not to think of anything at all.

 

“ _Cas?!_ Cas has been _here?_ And you’ve been fucking him?!” Dean winced slightly at the volume Sam was reaching and glanced guilty up to where Aliza was convincing Leah that it was bedtime. He’d timed this completely wrong he realised, but Sam had been chatting about some spelling competition the library was hosting or whatever and he’d just blurted it out.

 

Sam caught the look. “How am I supposed to explain this to Aliza? That the angel I prayed to finally decided to come back but only so he could catch a ride on my brother?”

 

“I didn’t know you’d prayed to him,” Dean said, picking up on the only part of that sentence he could deal with.

 

“Of course I prayed to him,” Sam ground out. “If there had been _any chance_ of saving Matthew I would have taken it.”

 

Dean got up from the table, took two steps away and turned, unsure what to do with the guilt that churned inside him.

 

“Look, it was, it was the _absolute_ fucking wrong thing to do, but... as fucked up as it is, and I’m not trying to defend him. I’m not, but I understand that he had his reasons.”

 

Sam folded his arms and looked expectant.

 

“He just. He knew he wouldn’t stop at saving Matthew,” Dean said, “that if he came back into our lives it wouldn’t take long until he was rearranging the fabric of reality to serve the greater good, and we both know how well that’s gone before.”

 

“He did come back though, he came back for you.”

 

“Yeah, and now he’s gone again, and he’s not coming back.”

 

Sam looked unconvinced.

 

“Look, he said it himself: he can’t remain an angel and… and care for me.”

 

His brother shook his head as if to clear it.

 

“OK, just. This isn’t the time for this. Let me try to explain to Aliza and just,” he threw up his hands, “promise me you’ll tell me if he shows up again?”

 

“Yeah. Yeah, no problem.”

 

Sam’s face told him what he thought about that, but then Aliza was coming back down the stairs, and they were both trying hard to pretend that the tension in the room wasn’t there. Aliza noticed, but she was good enough to not mention it, telling an improbable story about a student who had admitted to not doing the reading and then had proceeded to try to climb out of the window rather than suffer through the rest of the seminar unprepared. Dean felt a swell of gratitude well up in him as she told her story, lightening the air in the kitchen through her sheer determination. This woman who had looked at two beat up hunters and had not turfed them out of her classroom the first time they’d gone to her asking for help. And what had he done with her kindness? He’d fallen into bed with the creature that had let her son die.

 

He went home as early as he could get away with that night, both glad and painfully ashamed that Sam would be the one to tell Aliza about Castiel.

 

-

 

The Sunday after, Dean walked blearily into the war room in nothing but his boxers and stopped dead. Aliza was sat at the table, drinking coffee from his second favourite mug and reading the newspaper. Dean made some kind of half gesture, not sure what to do.

 

“Go get dressed, I’m good here,” she said, not even looking up.

 

By the time he got back she’d reached the sports section and had finished her coffee. Dean sat opposite her, wishing he’d gone to get himself some coffee first, awkwardness be damned.

 

She put down the newspaper and when she looked at him Dean could see that she was not exactly happy, but there was no sign of the anger or censure that he’d expected.

 

“First,” she began, “it is not my job to mediate between you and Sam. You’re both grown adults so act like it. Second, I would never claim to know the workings of _HaShem_ , and when He took Matthew from us it was for a higher purpose that I would not expect any of His creatures, Angel or otherwise, to interfere in. I know you don’t believe like I do, I know even Sam doesn’t, but this is what I believe. I also want you to know that I didn’t accept Matthew’s diagnosis lightly, I questioned and raged as you both did, but just because you were not privy to my conversations with the Almighty doesn’t mean you get to second guess them.”

 

Dean forgot sometimes that these things were real to some people. To a lot of people. They were real to him as well of course, but there was a whole world of a difference between real because you’d seen it and real because a deep well of belief inside yourself told you it was so. To Dean myth and religion were just a series of interlocking puzzles, and if he unravelled them just right he’d be able to understand whatever thing they were hunting that week. But there was also this: a belief so strong it could make sense of the incomprehensible. He thought of how useless he’d felt sitting shiva, but how Aliza and Sam had seemed to find strength in it, in these virtual strangers that bought food to their house and sat and talked with them. _May God comfort you_ , they’d said, and they had been comforted.  

 

But he didn’t know how to say any of that, or how to say that he had never been able to find the same comfort. That he blamed himself for Matthew's death, even while he knew it was selfish in the extreme to think that he was the only one carrying that grief, that he had such power over life and death.

 

“I’m sorry,” he offered instead, which he knew was a pathetic offering in light of what he’d done.

 

“Dean, I’m not mad at you. Well, I’m a little mad that you were doing something that you thought might hurt me, but I have spent enough time with Winchesters to understand that you have all the emotional maturity of a dead lemming.” Dean winced, he loved Aliza, but Jesus she cut to the bone sometimes.

 

“Now, are you still OK to have Leah this week?” Dean took the question as the peace offering it was, and spent the next ten minutes showing her all the ways he had Leah-proofed the library so she had another room she could wreck chaos in. Leah-proofing the whole Bunker was probably not possible, but he was making progress, one room at a time.

 

“Dean, it’s fine. I can’t imagine how she’d climb up that far anyway. Stop panicking.”

 

Dean frowned. “I never panic.”

 

Aliza patted his arm. “Sure, like that time with the monkey balls?”

 

“They were _on fire!_ ”

 

She laughed, and she sounded so like her daughter that Dean couldn’t help but smile.

 

-

 

After what felt like fucking forever, Dean finally scored a job at a local mechanic shop, working the front desk while their regular receptionist was on maternity leave. It wasn’t quite what he’d been aiming for, but he knew how to answer phones and use their ancient booking software so he was good. Plus, it gave him less time to mope around the bunker and cry in the shower. Which he definitely hadn’t done. But Jesus, it was hard. Last time he’d been missing a best friend, this time it was more than that. He should have said something the first time, he should have never let it get so far. That way at least he wouldn’t wake up every day feeling like someone had gutted him with a blunt knife during the night.

 

He’d told Sam and Aliza about the job, although he’d just kept it to ‘I work in the local mechanic shop’ rather than, ‘I was hired to work the phones cause the boss felt sorry for me after my please give me a job speech’. Two days a week at minimum wage was not exactly going to change his life, but he didn’t have to pay rent so he was doing better than most. He’d joked once to Aliza that he should be paid for babysitting, but she’d told him she’d happily charge him for food if that was the way he felt. He looked at her over the top of the perfect, flaky borekas that her mother had supplied him with and had promptly shut up.

 

He’d tried going out with a few of his new colleagues, but they both had wives and kids, so Dean was pretty much out for most of the conversation. He mostly went back to the way things had been before, except with added heartbreak and a few more bucks in his back pocket.

 

It had been two months to the day since he’d seen Cas when he turned up again, this time outside the bunker. Dean had gotten to the point in his distraction-seeking where he was sitting on the scraggly grass at the entrance to the bunker, drinking a beer and trying to decide if starting a vegetable patch was pathetic or awesome.

 

“Hello Dean,” Cas said, somewhat predictably.

 

Dean rubbed a hand over his face. He wasn’t even sure what ‘this’ was, but he was sure he really didn’t want to do it now.

 

“They finally throw you out of heaven?” he asked, aiming for levity and missing by about a million miles.

 

“No.”

 

Dean nodded, for lack of any better ideas.

 

“I just,” Cas paused. “I just wanted to explain.”

 

“Cas,” Dean gestured helplessly, “you already explained. You did. And I don’t… I know that between us we’ve done a lot of fucked up shit in the name of the greater good, and I can see why you’d be scared to get involved again. But you did come back Cas, you came back to me and I just. What the fuck was the point of staying away, of not…” He paused a took a wavering breath. “What was the point of Matthew dying, if you were going to come back anyway?”

 

Cas took a step towards him, then seemed to think better of it and remained where he was.  
  
“I thought I was strong enough, that I could continue my work rebuilding Heaven while you lived out your mortal life on earth, but it was not enough. Nothing is enough without you.”

 

“I missed you too, Cas. I missed my best friend. But Matthew was so small, he didn’t deserve this.”

 

“He had his time on earth, Dean, as all of us do.”

 

“So if I was dying, you’re saying you wouldn’t come down a save me? You let me die?”

 

“No, I would save you, which is why I cannot do both, I cannot love you and be an Angel. It does not work because we both know that when I love you, when I give myself up to you, there is nothing I would not do for you.”

 

Dean wiped away tears. He could see it, the shape of what Cas was telling him - he’d seen it in all the awful consequences of all the things he’d done over the years: making the deal to save Sam, in refusing to close the gates of Hell: all those lives lost to his inability to let go.

  
“Cas…”

 

“It’s OK Dean, I know what I have to do.”

 

He did come forward then, close enough to place both hands on Dean’s face and tilt his head down until he could kiss his forehead.

 

It felt like a benediction; it felt like goodbye. 

 

-

 

Four days later, Sam drove up to drop Leah off. Usually Dean went to Fairmont and picked her up, as there was little point in Dean babysitting if Sam then had to spend four hours commuting to Lebanon and back, but Sam had been insistent. Dean let them both in and he and Sam stood in semi-awkward silence while Leah bounced around the war room for a few minutes before running off to the library.

 

“Cas came back,” Dean blurted the second she was out of earshot.

 

Sam turned to him, surprised.

 

“To say goodbye,” Dean made himself add.

 

“I’m sorry man,” Sam said, with genuine sympathy. “I know there was always this thing between you. I never thought anything would come of it, but I can’t imagine how tough it must have been to watch him leave.”

 

Dean looked away, not even able to acknowledge to himself the truth of how long he’d loved Cas.

 

No more lies, they’d said when Sam had first settled down with Aliza, and Dean had stuck to it, telling Sam every time he was hurt on a job, inviting himself over to dinner when the weight of loneliness started to get to much, but he hadn’t said a word when Cas had been back. He owed it to Sam to explain, or at least to try.

 

“I just. Each time he was here I told myself it would be the last time I ever saw him so what did it matter. But then, he kept coming back and it was more than just… It was more. And then I asked him: about Matthew, about why. He said that every time he got close to us, to me, he ended up doing more harm than good.”

 

Dean thumbed briefly at his eyes to save himself the indignity of actually crying, while Sam gave him the puppy dog eyes of Total Empathy.

 

“He’s not coming back though. And I told you cause I was done lying to you, but I also needed to say it out loud because...”

 

“So you could be sure that it really happened. That you hadn’t imagined it all,” Sam finished for him, with infinite kindness.

 

Dean snorted. “Yeah, exactly. Jesus that’s fucked up.”

 

“Listen, I’m not angry with Cas for not saving Matthew.”

 

Dean raised his eyebrows at that.

 

“OK, I am angry at him, but I also know that Aliza believes that God gives us our allotted time and no more.”

 

“Cas said the same thing,” Dean offered, quietly.

 

“Yeah? Then how did he justify all the times he’s saved you?”

 

“He didn’t. He said he knew it was wrong, it was why he couldn’t stay.”

 

Sam sighed. “Look, you get that I’m angry with you for doing something you _believed_ would hurt me, right? Would hurt us. And I know how you feel about him, OK? I’ve known for a long time, but I want you to _tell me_ if he does come back. OK?”

 

Dean nodded, not really able to say out loud that he didn’t think that was going to happen, that perhaps the next time he saw Cas he’d be dead and stuck in the Heaven-induced hallucination that passed as an afterlife.

 

Leah saved him from having any more of that terrible conversation by choosing that moment to find something heavy in the next room to throw onto the floor. They looked at each other for half a second, startled back to reality, before launching themselves down the corridor to the library where Leah had somehow turned over a massive side table and was busy building a fort with the sofa cushions.

 

“Have you stopped being angry yet Daddy?” she asked, without looking up from what she was doing.

 

Dean had initially found himself wondering at first if Leah was psychic, but he’d since spent enough time lurking on parenting forums to know that six year olds were just terrifying in general.

 

He swallowed down his heartache and smirked at Sam who visibly restrained himself from rolling his eyes.

 

“Yes, Leah. I’ve stopped being angry.”

 

Dean’s smile was short-lived.

 

“Uncle Dean, have you stopped being sad yet?”

 

She obviously decided that Dean’s shocked silence was answer enough, and she sighed in a creepily adult-like manner before coming over and wrapping her arms around Dean’s middle.

 

“Better now?” she asked, looking up.

 

Dean had to clear his throat before he could answer, looking away from where Sam was radiating parental pride.

 

“Yeah, Leah.” He put a hand onto her fine dark hair as she lay her head against him again, “I feel better now.”

 

 


	2. Part II

**Part II**

  
  


On the North Devon coast of England the tide was out, revealing vast folded rocks formed during the collision of two supercontinents some 290 million years ago. Castiel had admired them at once, but they became more beautiful to him over time as clever humans had built great temples in the names of their gods. Now he saw not only the terrible heat and fire of the earth rising from the sea, but also the quiet grandeur of those echoing spaces. He had used them as a gate to Heaven for almost as long as they had existed. Now he stood under their hulking mass, thinking of his lover.

 

He thought of lying in Dean’s bed after he had gotten up to make coffee: the mussed sheets and residual warmth as holy as anything within the reach of Heaven. He thought of the grasping clench of Dean’s body as they made love, of the unabashed joy of his pleasure. They way he spoke to Sam over his shoulder because he always walked half a step ahead of his little brother. Of Aliza and Leah and Dean’s love for his new family. And of Matthew, whom Castiel had not saved.

 

A thousand thousand other faces and names overflowed within him, all souls he had let slip through his hands. Matthew had been a small grief, and a small life. He had forgotten the depth of feeling that Dean was capable of. Castiel had convinced himself of that great lie that humans told each other: that time heals all wounds. There was an illness that had been common in the near past, one where the lack of a certain nutrient resulted in not only new wounds not healing, but old ones, long forgotten, reopening. The body remembered all pain, both physical and mental. Castiel had known this, he had just chosen to forget in his desperate attempt to stay away from Dean Winchester and the temptation he offered.

 

He could not remain an Angel and love Dean, that was clear, and he did not know if Dean would ever forgive him for his mistake. However his decision had already been made. Perhaps he had made it the second he laid hands on Dean’s soul in Hell. Perhaps it had been more recent than that.

 

He was tempted to enter into Heaven one last time, to say goodbye to the few siblings left to him, perhaps even to try to explain his choice, but the second he stepped into Heaven’s light his resolve would falter. He had no way of knowing if the loss of his Grace was something he could survive a second time; that his human self would be welcome with Dean; or that he would even be able to find his way back without his powers to guide him. Regardless, Castiel chose to Fall.

 

Falling must be a conscious act as each drop of Grace had to be deliberately set aside: a gradual unweaving of a tapestry billions of years in the making. It was not the same as his Grace leaking out of him, stolen by circumstance, or as punishment for his misdeeds.

 

He unfurled his great wings, aware for once of every muscle and feather. He beat them once, twice, the sound of them booming like the sea, and then he let go of the power that directed his flight and let chaos take him.

  


-

  


When he opened his eyes again he was in a wide meadow. Black-eyed susans winked yellow at him in the heat, daisies and sunflowers, purple lupines and crested grasses wavered in the distance. He didn’t know where he was, but he knew when he was. He was at a fixed point in time, with only a forwards and a backwards discernible to him. It was Time as humans understood it: spooling outwards endless and linear.

 

He could feel the meadow as a singular entity. Its roots reached deep, deep into the earth, tethering the flowers and grasses to a more forgiving climate. There would always be a meadow full of foreign flowers in this desert now, his cast off wings enough to fuel this small oasis for the rest of time. Perhaps he could visit, he thought, a little dazed at the vastness of the loss. He thought that maybe lupines were one of Dean’s favourites.

 

The sun beat hot and relentless as he pressed his shoulder blades into the cool earth beneath him, his body seeking what he had deliberately cast aside. He eventually raised himself up a little at the sound of voices in the distance, male voices calling to each other, and to their God, in Pashto.

 

“Are you alright?”

 

Castiel looked up at the first man to reach him, he was young, long in limb with thick, dark eyelashes ringing brown eyes.

 

“I don’t know,” Cas replied, too shaken to disassemble.

 

He was helped up as two more men arrived, both a little older than the first, who was currently hovering at his elbow as he walked towards where the grass stopped and the sand began. There was no way of knowing what would remain to him one he fully lost his grace, but he was grateful that he could speak the same language as his hosts and see their souls well enough to know the he would be safe here, even in his diminished state.

 

There were on the outskirts of Taybad, the young man, Babrak, told him. The house they led him into was made of warm yellow brick, baked dry in the relentless sun, but inside was cool. Thick rugs absorbed their footfalls and they padded barefoot into the main room, where they sat on cushions and ate and drank sweet tea. As a guest, Castiel was offered food and drink, but he was asked no questions of where he had come from, or how there had come to be a meadow in the desert.

 

A young girl sat with her mother in the next room, away from the stranger in their midst. She was a poet, and even now he could hear the rhythms of a traditional Pashtun folk poem forming in her mind. _I’m tired of praising exotic flowers. / I miss the village gardens; they were poor but ours._

 

He was treated with utmost hospitality, fed, and offered the best room in the small house for the night. He gratefully accepted his hosts’ generosity, but set off the next morning to the city proper. Babrak walked him to the outskirts of Taybad, but seemed hesitant to say farewell.

 

“Thank you for the flowers in the desert: they are beautiful,” he finally said.

 

Grief stole Castiel’s voice. Not that it mattered - even in a language older than Christ, there was no way to convey the depth of his loss.

 

Babrak placed one warm hand on his shoulder for a moment. “ _Mashallah,_ ” he said.

 

As God has willed it.

 

-

  


It took four days to reach the capital, alternately walking and hitching rides along the winding route of the highway. The scenery was beautiful, but Castiel was heartsick from the loss of his wings, and found himself unmoved by the mountains that flowed past the windows of the cars he caught rides in. He thought instead of Dean, telling an incomprehensible joke in some anonymous motel room about an extinct flying reptile genus of pterosaurs and a bathroom. He’d laughed heartily at his own joke while Castiel had attempted to puzzle out the meaning. Dean had tried to explain four different ways, each time as patient as the last, but Sam had finally spoken up for the other side of the room to request that they give up the whole endeavor and choose a new subject. However, Castiel had been enjoying Dean’s explanations, and had been disappointed enough at their end to return to Heaven where he could meditate without interruption on both the meaning of the joke and the way Dean’s eyes creased when he laughed. He had become more aware with time that Dean had been upset when he ‘winged off’ without notice, but he had often returned to Heaven with such memories of the Winchesters cupped between his hands so that he could better contemplate their beauty.

 

Tehran was a sprawling metropolis, only becoming the capital city of Iran in recent human memory. Castiel had never had cause to visit before, but the legends surrounding the white peak of Mount Damavand in the distance were familiar to him: some 12,000 years ago the great sorcerer Dahāg had been defeated by King Feyredon there. Each time he had struck the sorcerer with his great mace snakes and insects had spilled from his wounds until the God Ormzad had intervened in order to stop the world being overrun with such creatures. So King Feyredon had instead bound Dahāg and imprisoned him within the mountain for all time. Castiel hadn’t witnessed the event himself, but Gabriel had told him of it a few thousand years later, though he changed the story many times with the re-telling of it: first insisting that Dahāg had taken on the shape of a three-headed dragon, and then that he had ruled with the help of demons and monsters. Regardless, Mount Damavand was a suitable prison: _Oh white giant with feet in chains_ , _Oh dome of the world, Oh Mount Damāvand._ It was said that at the end of the world Dahāg would break free from his chains and ravage the world, and the great hero Kirsāsp would be resurrected to slay him. Castiel realised suddenly that he would not be alive to witness the end of the stories that Gabriel had told to him so long ago. At that moment a car drove by, music blasting and startling him out of his reverie. He turned away from the mountain, and began to walk again.

 

He did not yet require rest or sustenance, but it would only be so long before these needs appeared. He had no coin nor anything to barter, but he had faith in the kindness of strangers. He made his way west, sometimes walking for many hours in the heat. His skin remained pale and unburnt, but his shoes soon gave way. A family in Sahneh gave him a new pair, and another family in Mahi Dasht gave him a small backpack to carry, with a sturdy water bottle inside. He didn’t need the water yet, but he would and he was grateful. The first family had an old dog, faithful but blinded by illness. She curled over his feet in the night, as he lay there. She was surely expecting her master and mistress to be in the bed, and was a little bemused to find a stranger instead, but she was happy to receive Castiel’s gentle pats. Without consciously thinking of it, he let a trickle of what grace he had left seep into her, giving her a few more years life and restoring her eyesight. It was not much, but it would save his hosts a little grief, for a little time.

 

He walked the last few miles to the Iraq border, the dust of the roads gritty in his eyes and the sunset glorious in its brilliance. It was late by the time he arrived at the Khosravi crossing. Suddenly he remembered humans and their obsession with paper records of their own names and origins. Dean and Sam had had whole boxes filled with such bit of paper and plastic, naming them as law enforcement, pest control and park rangers. Castiel wished for one of their Identity Cards now, but instead he gently suggested to the suspicious guard on duty that he be let through. It was only so long before the ability to manipulate human minds was lost to him, but for now, he would use it when necessary.

 

Both the Kurdish and Iraqi flags flew over a bone white arch on the other side of the gates,  the regular streetlights only serving to highlight the deep dark of the desert. He walked until sunrise, the pale morning light casting long shadows from the low buildings that began to appear along the edge of the road. In Al Mazra’a, near a green and golden mosque, he found an abandoned easy chair, its insides spilling out onto the sidewalk. He sat for a while, the air still and hot. In the fields surrounding the city, men and women toiled at their day’s labour, and within the quiet of the mosque behind him the Imām spoke to a member of his congregation. However the thousands of miles between him and Dean gnawed at him, so after only a short while he got up again and continued onwards.

 

He learnt names of cities, both ancient and new: Baghdad, where a women who had once prayed at the mosque in Al Mazra’a had been hanged for sedition; across the Euphrates, where copper ore was once transported on rafts; to a city with over 200 mosques. He and his companions drove over the buried bones of Kish, sifted into sand by time. It had been a glorious city ruled by a King who lived for over half a century, some 3,000 years before Jesus walked the earth.

 

Eventually they came again to the lines that humans had drawn in the earth to say which dirt belonged to whom, but this time his most recent companion spoke a few words in Arabic to the guard and they passed through easily.

 

“My brother,” his companion explained.

 

Castiel nodded his thanks. “Siblings are a blessing.”

  


-

  


It had been nothing specific in the end that had called him back from Heaven. Dean had stopped praying directly to him years ago, although his soul still reached out sometimes as he slept. It was simply that he was tired, tired of pretending to himself that the memories were enough, that the sameness of Heaven would sustain him. Angels did not tire, of course. They did not long for another’s company. They did not beg God for the strength to hold fast in the face of their beloved’s pleas. It was a conundrum that had haunted him since the first moment he had rebelled: how could he be an Angel, and yet love Dean Winchester.

 

He had stood for long seconds when he had first arrived in the bunker, half hidden out of time. He watched an older Dean sort through lethally cursed artifacts as if they were nothing. He was content, Castiel could see, and with that knowledge he had almost returned to Heaven without letting Dean know he was there, but then Dean had reached for something tainted with a poison so strong he would have died within seconds of touching it. After he had announced himself, he thought for a moment that Dean had forgotten him. Human minds were fragile, after all, but the great swell of grief, anger and longing that rolled through Dean when he realised that Castiel had truly returned was enough to show that he had not. Castiel was ashamed to admit he was relieved. Better to be remembered and hated than to look into Dean’s eyes and see no recognition there.

 

He had tried to restrain himself, but it had been too easy to reach out this time. The distance had worn away at his resolve not to give into physical attraction, and Dean had responded so readily: pushing up into the contact, seeking out his mouth and hands. They had found pleasure in each other, and again Castiel had lied to himself: that it was enough that he stayed through the night when he could; that he was careful not to ask too much of Dean; that he drank his beer and ate his food. Surely, good deeds erased bad? Was there not a way in which he could be forgiven? But he didn’t know how to ask these questions, so he had stayed with Dean as long as he could, spending more and more time on Earth and neglecting his duties in Heaven, until Dean had broken the silence and said his nephew’s name.

 

It sometimes felt as if there were two Castiels: one who placed his hand over Dean’s heart as he slept, who knew the shape of this human’s fears and loves, who understood his grief. Then there was the other Castiel: one had once spent a century watching blossoms bloom across Japan: the wave of colour as it swept from Okinawa to Hokkaidō accompanied by millions of voices raised in praise of the sakura, thanking their ancestors, Buddha, Christ, or no-one at all: simply admiring the transient beauty and it faded and rose again each year. That ancient being could not fathom the depth of loss that Dean had felt for the few hours he had known his nephew.

 

That Castiel was no longer though, and with each small loss of grace he felt he was growing closer to understanding. In Greece some 2000 years ago, a philosopher stated that there was no grief which did not lessen or soften. But sorrow could not be measured by time, humans were wrong about that. Grief was not distance travelled from an event, it could not be quantified in prayers or woe. Loss was measured by what humans became because of it. It was folded into their hearts, along with kindness, with love, with life.

 

From now on, he would be tied to the seasons as they passed. He may only see another forty slow blossomings, whereas once he had watched a hundred flow past in the blink of an eye.

 

Castiel mourned this loss, and wondered what he would become because of it.

  


-

  


Saudi Arabia was a comfort to him. A land so old that his dwindling grace was not so obvious, not when the ancient world was visible even to humans. It was also a place of great faith, and the echoes of some billion people’s prayers to their God, to Allah, were strong enough that even Castiel could feel their force. As he passed through the Hejaz Province he remembered that Balthazar had once collected pottery from the region, some thousand years or so before Christ had come to earth: brightly coloured, with birds and flowers. He wondered if Balthazar had taken them to earth with him when he had fled Heaven. He purposefully turned his mind away then, too cowardly to think too long on his sibling’s fate at his own hand.

 

From Saudi Arabia he slowly made his way into Egypt. He was passed from car to truck, from hand to hand: strangers gave him shelter, food and companionship. They asked him few questions, but were glad of his stories when he had the heart to tell them. In Tabuk he spread his hands on cool brick of a family’s home and laid down a warding spell that would stop any person who meant them harm from entering. In Ain Sokhna he met a young woman who offered him sweet tea from her stall on the side of the road. He spoke to her for a while, them both sweating in the heat. He asked her if he could give her a blessing, and she laughingly agreed. He softly, so softly, drew the Enochian symbol for protection over her heart, so anyone who sought to physically harm her would receive the harm themselves, turned back threefold.

 

In Libya he passed an old temple to the great Zeus, though it no longer echoed with the ancient God’s power. In Sirte there were colourful awnings along the local bazaar, and he could hear Tamazight and Arabic - even Italian once or twice.

 

And Dean. Always Dean. He saw him everywhere: in the tilt of a man’s head when he laughed; in the confident movement of a woman cooking at a roadside cafe; in a young boy, teasing his sibling. It was a comfort to have these shades with him and his heart lifted with joy each time he caught an echo of his lover.

 

He mostly travelled by coastal road, unsure if his human body would survive the heat of the desert for long periods of time. The men he travelled with told him of the civil war that had put an end to tourism in Libya, and despite the safety of the Western part of the country, many people had left. Castiel took the opportunity to walk around the ruins of Leptis Magna in the early morning light. Except for his companions, there were no other visitors, and the great Arch of Septimius was eerie in the soft silence. It should have been impossible that human hands had built such things, and yet here they stood despite the march of time. He patted one stone, already hot to touch. It gave him hope, than such a thing could survive despite war and the centuries. People would come back to these places, he was sure, and they would again echo with laughter and awe.

 

“What are you thinking?” his newest friend, Omar, asked.

 

“I was thinking of the fall of another great Roman metropolis: Constantinople,” Cas replied, his fading grace allowing him to see the grandeur of the city overlaying the ruins.

 

“You are very strange, my friend, but I like you,” Omar laughed, brightly. “Come, we have a long way to go before we get to the border and I think you should tell us another story on the way.”

 

Castiel readily agreed, and, speaking in such a way he hoped hid the fact that he had been there to witness the event, he told of the fall of Constantinople. It was the same story he had told Dean as he’d sat inside the circle of his great wings, watching the stars circle through the breaks in his feathers. His words tapered off eventually, and his new friends let him be, the lull of the road rocking him to sleep.

 

For the most part, he was able to continue well enough. As the simple act of travelling became more difficult it occupied all of his attention. He had to concentrate on languages, finding the hook that would pull him from one concept to another, instead of having them all fully formed in his mind. For the first time he had to chase meaning and search for sounds. He slept and ate, showered and sweated. Most distressing of all had been the discovery of blisters. It seemed that even during his previous time as a human he had not walked far enough for them to become an issue. They were hateful, pus-filled sores and by the time he arrived in Tunisia every step was an agony. He had cried a little when a women at a stall in Gabes had helped him pick out a salve, then offered a place for him to sit whilst he put it on. He’d had little grace left to give at that point, but he had thanked her, and told her a little of the light and wonder that awaited her when her time was done on earth. She had smiled and thanked him, but he was not sure she that she had believed him. Nonetheless, the knowledge that a place had been prepared for her went some way to ease his guilt that he had not had any money to pay her.

 

He liked Gabes. The low white buildings did not make him long for his wings the way the skyscrapers in Tripoli had, and the musicality of Tunisian Arabic soothed him. He had meant to travel further along the coast, but most traffic was going towards the phosphate mines in Gafsa, and Hélé, who had so kindly given him the slave for his blisters, had advised him to rest his feet for a while.

 

Gafsa had been continually inhabited for over 10,000 years, but with the exception of some Roman ruins, there was little evidence visible to him of that history in the city he entered some few hours later. An airplane roared overhead, and in the distance he could see trains loaded with phosphorus rocks from the mines heading to the coast.

 

From Gafsa he found himself in a truck heading towards Thelepte, which he thought might have once been part of the Roman province of Byzacena. He and his companions stopped for some food in a small village a few miles from Firyanah, where an old woman with traditional Berber tattoos was making rougag bread on an open fire outside her home. The tattoos would prevent any _jnoun_ from entering her body, and it occurred to him for the first time that he himself was no longer immune from possession. He would have to get a tattoo. Perhaps Dean would lend him an anti-possession necklace in the meanwhile, he thought with no small amount of hope.

 

Finally, he found himself in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains, contemplating the snowy peaks as they rose into the flat blue of the sky. There would be a way over, he had no doubt that there would be roads, but he had yet to find someone who would take him there. He asked a few people, who pointed him towards a bus station, where he could take one of the daily buses that made its way through the pass, although the question of money was, as ever, an issue. Money was was fast becoming one of his most hated part of being human, second only to blisters.

 

His human eyes responded to light from approximately 350 to 700 nanometers, and his night vision was much diminished. He had noticed that in the dark, light intensity was stronger when he looked at an object from the corner of his eyes, as if he must sneak up on something in order to view it clearly. It was much the same with the remnants of his grace. He could not approach it directly: he could only feel the fine threads of it on the periphery of his perception, and it took an exhaustive amount of energy to convince the woman in the ticket to give him a one way ticket to Tabarka for the next bus. He fell asleep almost instantly once he got to his seat, and didn’t even notice that he had a neighbour until he was awoken with a lurch an interminable time later. They were in the high passes, so he must have been asleep for sometime. At first he struggled to understand the feelings of panic that flowed from his fellow passengers, then the coach again floundered and he knew that they were all in grave danger. They slid sideways in the dusty dark, the driver struggling with the wheel to control the skid of tires. There was a lurch as the back of the coach hit the low barrier that was all that stood between them and a quick death. More than a few people screamed, and the women next to him began to chant softly to herself. He dug deep and dragged enough grace from his dwindling supply to force the coach back fully onto the road. There was a little more shouting and congratulating the driver after that, but Castiel could only think of the words of the women sat next to him. He had thought she had been praying, but he was mistaken and she had been reciting a fragment of poetry so old that Castiel had to concentrate to translate it into a living language:

 

_someone will remember us_

_I say_

_even in another time_

 

He repeated it to himself as he panted through the pain of using so much of his power when so little was left to him. He hoped to see Dean soon.

  


-

  


The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, ‘I cannot step twice into the same stream.’ That was true for humans, but it had never been true for Castiel. Sometimes, in the vast aloneness of Heaven, stepping in and out of his memories of Dean had been the only thing that had sustained him. He’d felt guilty for it, that his siblings had not needed such a crutch to lean on, but he had told himself that visiting the memories caused no harm, that it was safer than visiting Dean Winchester himself.

 

He remembered clearly the last time the Winchesters had prayed directly to him: he had gone to sit with his sibling Dumah, who had offered their silence as a sanctuary as Castiel had struggled not to respond to the brothers’ pleas.

 

_Look, I don’t know if you can hear me, and I think I understand why you’ve stayed away, but if you’re going to perform a miracle, now would be a good time._

 

That had been Sam, of course. The calm of his prayer masking a deep anger: he had believed that Castiel would come, because Dean had believed. Despite all that lay between them, Sam was Dean’s little brother. His faith in Dean outshone his faith even in God.

 

_Cas, please. I’m sorry… I’m sorry for whatever it was that I did that means that you won’t answer me… I mean, I know I did a lot of things wrong, but I’m sorry for all of them. Please come back. We need you, buddy... I need you._

 

Dean. The pain that ignoring his prayers had caused him at the time was nothing compared to the pain that the memory of it caused him now. It gouged great wounds into him; it stole his breath.  He could not imagine what it had done to Dean. And yet, he had still accepted Castiel when he had finally returned. He had offered him food and drink, as strangers had done for Castiel along his way. The great generosity of spirit that all humans were capable of was astonishing to him, but it was Dean who surprised him most. All needs that Castiel had expressed, Dean had met: companionship, intimacy and love. And Castiel had drank from his generosity like a thirsty man in the desert, not giving a thought to what it might have cost Dean.

 

Years ago he had stood in a suburban yard and watched Dean sweep up leaves. It had been both a respite from the chaos of Heaven, and a timely warning of what would happen if he were to become once again entwined with Dean Winchester. He had seen both the reality of the moment and he had seen Dean raking not leaves, but blood and offal: the putrid remains of all those who would die if he had manifested and brought Dean into his fight. Those deaths had come to pass anyway, and Castiel’s brief moment of self-restraint had only bought them a little time. It was a lesson that had been hard learnt: it was not that he could not love Dean and be an Angel, it was simply that the destruction caused by doing both was a price too high to pay. It was something he reminded himself of often as he walked on sore feet along towards the coast:that even if he could no longer see all possible futures laid out before him, that exact lack of power meant that he was no longer capable of causing great harm to the world. There would be no more stolen souls, abandoned armies, or siblings slaughtered on his blade.

 

He did not know what he would do if Dean could not forgive him. He thought he would go back to the garden in the desert he had made and sit among the remnants of his wings for a while. Perhaps he could help Babrak and his family on their land. It would nice to be close to what was left of his wings.

 

A car passed him on the road. He stuck out his thumb as he’d been taught but it didn’t slow. Dean had been unable to explain the meaning behind the gesture, although he’d tried, but he had impressed upon Castiel the correct technique for hailing a lift. So far it had served him well, and he had spent long hours as he walked imagining telling Dean about his adventures. His musings served as an effective distraction for a while, but he soon became aware of the sweat at his hairline and the ache of his feet. He now had two sets of clothes in his backpack, along with the flask that had been given to him some 3,000 miles ago, and a tiny square of paper with a prayer for travellers written in Arabic - all gifts. He thought he would need another pair of walking boots before long, although these ones had either molded to the shape of his feet, or, more likely, his feet had been molded to the shape of the boots. He did not relish the idea of more blisters. As he walked, he took out his flask and took a sip of the cool water within. The folded prayer was stuck to the side of the flask with condensation, so he carefully peeled it off and opened it flat so he could read it.

 

_Glory to Him who put our journey under our control, even though we have none over the events of our lives. Surely to Him we will be one day be returned._

 

Yes, it was his hope that one day he would be returned to Heaven. A twin longing rose up in him, pulling him both back to the place where he had planted his wings and forward to Dean. A car drove up behind him and then past but he paid it no mind, intent on breathing without gasping. Dizzy, he sat on the side of the road, the hot asphalt blurring as he tried to control his breath. He imagined Dean sat next to him, his hand warm on his back through his t-shirt and his voice steady beside him. _Come on Cas, just breathe, I know you can do it._

 

No more cars passed by, but the sun’s position changed a little whilst he sat in the heat, waiting for his heart to slow. His life could have ended there, under the hot sun, insects loud in the undergrowth, it could end at any minute he realised. A slip on a high road, a car crash, a missed breath as he walked alone from one village to another. He cried then for a little while, at the thought that he would die before he reached Dean. That he would reach Dean and not be forgiven: that he did not deserve to be.

 

Eventually he got up and walked.

  


-

  


He liked TV, he decided. He was sitting in cafe in Sajanan, nursing the coffee an old man had bought him an hour ago. There was a show of some sort on, where people laughed together off screen whenever a character told a joke. He liked the frequent laughter: the even sound pleased him. The cafe was tiny, dark wood soaked in fifty years of spilled tea and coffee. It was as much history as he could read of the place: his abilities becoming more limited with each passing day.

 

Outside children were participating in a local celebration of some sort, dark haired girl-children dressed in red held small flags and danced as their parents recorded them on their phones and other recording devices. He could have asked a local the significance of the festival, but he was still reeling a little from the concept that he has to _ask_ someone for an explanation, instead of being able to feel the history of the event resonate up through him as the children stamped their small feet to a beat that seemed instinctive. Perhaps he should be more grateful that his language skills had remained mostly intact.

 

He had been reassured by locals that he was no more than an hour away from the closest port, but there had been a lull in people heading out that way as the town enjoyed its festivities. He had considered walking, but he did not want another experience like the one he had had between Tabarka and Nefza, so he waited. For a frozen moment, be thought he saw Dean in the crowd outside: a flash of green eyes and a wide smile, but that was impossible. He went back to his now cold coffee to wait, determinedly keeping his eyes fixed on the table in front of him.

 

Eventually he was on his way, and some four hours later he was dropped off by a truck full of young men at a fork in the road a few miles from the coast. There was nothing but the heat wavering in the distance, so he began to walk again. Arid land ran either side of the highway, but there was plenty of green in the form of hardy bushes and trees than clung to the side of the road. One-storey houses began to appear, enclosed in off-white brick walls, until he was once again in a town. People called to each other in greeting across the street, and a gang of schoolchildren swarmed in front of him for a moment before disappearing into a sidestreet. He had slept a little in the car, but his eyes remained gritty with sleep. He had only had to sleep outside in the elements twice so far and, although it had not been a particularly pleasant experience, he had never felt in any kind of danger. However, he suspected that was more to do with the gender of the body he inhabited… his own gender now, he supposed.

 

It was strange to think of the slowly dying body as his own, complete with all the miracles and failings of humankind. He was discovering that he no longer had perfect recollection of his time with Dean: the memories were worn at the edges, the colour faded and the sounds faint. Not just his memories of Dean, but of everything. He had met a woman in Egypt who had driven him nearly two hundred miles in a day. As he had gone to say goodbye, he had had to pour energy into trying to remember her name - the sound of it ringing like far away bells in his mind, but just out of reach of his voice. She had laughed when he had explained, apologising profusely, that he had forgotten her name, and had replied that she had forgotten his, so it wasn’t important.

 

Still though, such lapses haunted him, and as the sun began to set he worried at the limits of his memories while he searched for a place to sleep. A small hostel in the middle of the city accepted his few dinars in exchange for a bed in a shared room and a rented towel. It was far enough from the port that he couldn’t hear the waves, but the smell of salt permeated everything, and the shower stand was gritty with sand. He was exhausted from walking in the heat, but sleep took a long time to come to him. The room was hot despite the lazily spinning fan in the room, and the soft snores of his neighbours were unceasing.

 

He had come so far, and now the wide ocean stood between him and his destination. He found he could no longer measure time, nor clearly see the path before him. To be a diminished thing, so far from the glory of his brothers and sisters, from God. He had known pain before, but had never before borne this gradual fading of self. When humans grew old, they sometimes grew confused - they forgot who their loved ones were, they forgot pieces of themselves, but when they died and were brought into Heaven, those things lost to them coalesced into a whole, bright being once more. Castiel had always thought it lovely when he bore witness such an event, but now he felt he was experiencing it in reverse, and he worried, in that endless space between waking and sleep, he worried that he might forget Dean.

 

-

  


Gabriel had told him once that every Angel was terror. He had later discovered it had not been his elder sibling being unusually insightful, but was in fact a line from a poem. It had struck a note within him nonetheless, and it had come back to him when he had learned of his brother’s death. Humans were ever skilled at describing horror, both that perpetrated by their own hands and that which surrounded them. _Every Angel is terror_. The further from himself he travelled, the more he could see the truth of that statement, and yet, Dean had fallen in love with him, with the terrible being that he had been, that he perhaps still was. Even with his now limited memory, he could recall numerous times when it had been clear how Dean had felt for him. The shame he experienced over his love for Castiel had often shaded his words with sarcasm and anger, but Castiel had always heard the truth behind them. Even mere days after they first had met, Dean had allowed Castiel to comfort him when he had discovered how Azazel had worked to destroy his family. Years later, beaten and bloody, Dean had gone to his knees before Castiel and begged for him to return to himself, undoing the work of Naomi, an Angel who had supported the Archangels themselves for millennia. A mere human had called him back to himself: Castiel, who had once slaughtered humans by the thousands.

 

He had been so angry when Dean had decided to give himself up to Micheal, not only at Dean but at himself. A handful of years in the presence of one, flawed human and he had given up everything he had ever known to follow him down a path too dark to see. He hadn’t understood what had been fueling the anger at the time. He had been too new to his emotions to be able to untangle the worry and devotion from the maelstrom inside him. He therefore could not pinpoint the exact moment he had he loved Dean, or even the moment when he had realized that that love was returned. Perhaps it had been in some anonymous motel room, the smell of stale smoke and exhaust heavy in the air, listening to Dean explain some minutiae of popular culture for the sixth time. He had never stopped, Castiel realised, Dean had never grown weary of Castiel’s stubborn lack of understanding, or his inability to adhere to the most basic etiquette of saying goodbye before leaving. He had never stopped trying to relate the world as he saw it to Castiel, a creature so old he remembered the first fish gasping on the shore. He had never stopped reaching out to him, through word or deed, even when it was only through his dreams. Dean had never stopped loving him.

  


-

  


Castiel stood facing the sea in Bizerte, the ruins of Carthage at his back. On the other side of the port white buildings shone in the early morning sun, but the side he stood on was still relatively cool. Evenly shaped containers stacked on top of one another towered over him, each in a colour brighter than any Queen Dido could have known in her rich kingdom. The sinuous curves of the metal rivaled his Angel sword in their perfection, and the voices of the dockworkers as they called to each other was a song. He wandered, ignored, amongst the men and few women as they worked in harmony to move each container from its place on the dock onto the vast deck of the waiting ships. He had no money to pay for a ticket, and no papers to prove he could travel, so he walked along the dock until he came across a man making notes in an office ingeniously made from the same curved metal of the containers themselves. It was hot in the office, hotter than comfortable for Castiel, and the man, Sebastian, had sweat on his brow and gathered at the back of his neck. He was Senegalese-French, and he spoke as many languages as fingers on his hands. A good man, Castiel decided, and faithful. Perhaps he would help.

 

He waited until Sebastian had finished work for the day, then followed him into a late-opening cafe that, confusingly, was named after the capital of England. As he stepped inside he worried for a moment on how to start a conversation with this stanger, but Sebastian did the hard work for him but offering a him a seat at his table, waving him over as he stood in the middle of the room, coffee in hand.

 

“You seem far from home, my friend,” Sebastian said, which was as good as opening as he could have hoped for. After introductions, they spoke of the history of the great city whose bones lay beneath their feet in Hebrew and Arabic, French and Persian. Sebastian told him of his job as Chief Officer aboard the massive ships he had seen at the dockyard, of the spectacular sunsets he had seen and the whales and dolphins who sometimes swam alongside the ship. Castiel recounted some stories from his journey in exchange, and Sebastian marvelled at all the miles he had walked and the kindness of the strangers he had encountered.

 

Finally, as the little cafe began to empty, Castiel asked the question he had come to ask.

 

“I have no money, and no papers to prove my identity, but I had hoped that you would be willing to take me with you to America. I cannot give you money for this favour, but I can grant you something in return.”

 

Sebastian laughed, a great booming laugh that drew smiles from the remaining customers. He explained that he was grateful for the good company, but he could not take a random passenger with no identity on his ship.

 

“I will give you what you most need,” Cas said, and he could see that despite himself, Sebastian was intrigued.

 

“And what will you give me, my odd friend?” he asked.

 

“Your wife, children and parents-in-law live not far from Bizerte. When you have been back home recently you have noticed that your wife is worried about something, you think it is money and have tried to reassure her, but in fact your mother-in-law is unwell, she has a sickness that is eating away at her memory, at her sense of self, and your wife is finding it increasingly difficult to look after her when you are away, but she knows you must travel for work so she doesn’t wish to burden you with this knowledge.”

 

Sebastian had been first suspicious, then had grown more sombre as Castiel had gone on.

 

“When you go home tonight, ask your wife about your mother-in-law and she will tell you the truth.”

 

“How do you know this, stranger?” Sebastian asked, wariness in his voice, but Castiel had chosen well, and he believed enough to hear the end of Castiel’s offer.

 

“If what I’ve said is true, you must give her the gift I will give you and she’ll be herself again. If that happens, you will take me to America on your ship in exchange.”

 

Castiel clenched his left hand and concentrated hard, pain lancing through him with the effort. When he unfurled his hand the very last drop of his Grace lay on his palm, as bright as the sun in the desert.

 

Sebastian caught his breath, then hesitantly reached out to take the drop into his own hand. He cradled it against his chest. “I will do as you say,” he said.

 

As morning dawned the next day, Castiel sat on the edge of the dock and watched the light swim up from the sea to touch the beach and the buildings beyond. A little while after the sun had fully risen, a man sat next to him on the dock, close enough that Castiel could smell the clean scent of his clothes.

 

“I will take you to America,” Sebastian said.

 

Castiel nodded, and they sat together for a little while as the temperature started on its steady rise. Sebastian stood with a sigh and then offered his hand to help Castiel stand.

 

“ _Elohim gadol_ ,” he said as he pulled Castiel up and into a brief embrace.

 

“God is great,” Castiel agreed. He was going home.

 


	3. Epilogue

 

**Epilogue**

 

He had meant to go directly to Lebanon from Kansas City, but his last lift had dropped him at a small town some three hours away from his final destination. It was starting to get dark, and Castiel despaired at being so close to his goal and yet so far. He had decided to walk through the night along the main road in the hope of catching another ride, but instead he found himself wandering along the small, neat roads of a little place that a sign declared was Fairmont. It was quiet, and he did not need his grace to let him know that most of the inhabitants were already in bed. What houses there were were sparsely placed, with wide swaths of greeney between each one. Most were sprawling one-storey affairs, with trucks parked out front, but about half-way down 2nd Street he noticed a small, neat two-storey house, a riot of lupines bordering the front yard.

 

There was now nothing left of his grace but the shadow of the wound where his wings had been. And yet, he knew this place - it called to him. A place of grief, but no longer. A home for a boy named Matthew, ‘Gift of the Lord’; for a boy named Menahem, ‘Comfort’; for a boy named Winchester, ‘the Righteous Man’. This was the home of Sam and Aliza, and it was where he needed to be.

 

He knocked on the porch door. It was late, but perhaps not so late as to be unusual. After a moment a slight, dark haired women answered. Even without his powers, he could feel the strength of her faith: it lay upon her as both shield on her arm and a sword in her hand.

 

“Hello Aliza,” he said. “My name is Castiel, and I am truly sorry for your loss.”

 

She looked at him for a long moment before opening the door wide.

 

“Well, in that case, you better come in.”

 

-

 

Aliza had informed him that Sam was working late at the library and would be back sometime before eleven. So far he had been ushered into the guest bathroom to shower, given clean clothes to wear, and provided with both food and drink. It was not the welcome he had been expecting. It was clear that Leah was with Dean, so it was just the two of them sat in the neat kitchen, drinking coffee in heavy silence.

 

“Why did you come back?” she finally asked.

 

Castiel shifted, unsure how to sum up his love of Dean Winchester.

 

“I missed him. I know it is an inadequate truth, but it is the only truth. I stayed away because of the terrible things I have done in his name, but I could not hold my resolve.” He paused to think of his next words, and Aliza gave him the space to do so. “When I saved Dean from Hell, I remade his body with my own hands. I loved him then, and I love him now, but since then I have committed terrible atrocities in both his name and mine. I came to the conclusion that I could continue to love him or remain an Angel, but not both. I only knew how to give up one of those things.”

 

Aliza looked at him, a little shocked. “You Fell?”

 

He nodded. “I did.”

 

“Does he know?”

 

Castiel shook his head. “I tried to explain before I left, but Dean - he, he hears what he thinks is being said, and what he hears is always the worst possible outcome.”

 

Aliza smiled a little. He imagined she was familiar with that particular trait.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

She looked up from her coffee.

 

“I’m sorry I didn’t save him.”

 

Aliza paused for a moment, as if to weigh her words.

 

“I questioned Him, when I first heard the diagnosis. Why would He give me a child who was already marked for death? I argued with my parents, my grandparents, my Rabbi… I asked for a sign, and when you didn’t come at Dean’s prayers, when I know you had come so many times before, I knew this was what the Almighty wanted from me. It was only then I agreed to name him Menahem.”

 

“It is a good name.” Castiel hesitated, unsure if what he was about to say would offer comfort or not. “In the Messianic Age, when you are reunited with all who have gone before, you will not need to search for your son, as there will be only one child named Matthew Menahem Winchester.”

 

She looked away before replying. “There is nothing to forgive. My son had the time on earth that was given to him and no more, as any of us do, and as you say, I know I will see him again.” She looked back at Castiel, and her eyes were dry. He had been right about her: her faith was her shield and sword, she needed no other reassurance.

 

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get you a bed for the night, you can speak to Sam and Dean tomorrow.”

 

-

 

Sam had seen too many people rescued from Death’s greedy hands to be quite as sanguine at having Castiel in his house, and he was not hesitant in making his feelings known. The second Castiel had come down the stairs and into the kitchen the next morning, Sam was on his feet and demanding answers.

 

“Jesus, Cas, how _could_ _you_?”

 

Castiel felt rage flare briefly, who was this man, this man rank with demon taint, who had brought about so much suffering with his actions, who was this man to judge Castiel, an Angel of the Lord? But of course, Castiel, as an Angel of the Lord, had done so much worse.

 

“Sam,” Castiel started, then stopped. “I do not expect you, _any_ of you, to forgive me for not responding to you in your hour of need, but if you will allow me, I would like to try to explain.”

 

Sam nodded once and crossed his arms where he stood, but at his wife’s touch he sat back down at the kitchen table where Castiel joined them.

 

He hesitated, then said, “when you failed to close the gates of Hell my heart was joyful.”

 

Sam flinched a little, but offered no reply.

 

“I was glad, because I knew how much your loss would have affected your brother, and I preferred that demons remained on earth, causing uncountable horror and suffering; that crossroad demons would continue to tempt people into bargains that would result in many lifetimes of torture and agony; that hunters would continue their impossible quest to rid the world of those evil creatures. All of it, I was glad for all of it, because I love Dean Winchester.” He stopped, his shame silencing him.

 

“I think I know what you’re trying to say,” Sam said quietly, ever kind, “and I -” He looked at Aliza, “ _we_ are glad you’re back, really. Dean has been… well...” he snorted softly to himself, “he’s been Dean, but we could tell he was pretty cut up about you leaving. But I can’t forgive you for Matthew, not yet, and I know that’s hypocritical after everything I’ve done…”

 

“No,” Castiel said, sharply. “Do not let yourself be troubled, we cannot compare the burden of guilt we carry. If you do not,” he hesitated, “if you cannot forgive me, I will understand.”

 

Sam seemed to gather himself, rubbing his hands over his face as if to erase the conversation.

 

“Have you met Leah yet?”

 

“No, not yet.”

 

“You’ll love her,” Sam said, nodding to himself. “She’s like a weird mix of Aliza and Dean.”

 

“I’m not sure how I feel about that assessment,” Aliza added, and Sam turned his smile on her, where it became significantly brighter.

 

Castiel swallowed. He did not deserve to be offered this, to be trusted in the same room as Sam’s second child when he had failed the first so catastrophically.

 

“Yes,” he agreed. “I’m sure that I will.”

 

-

 

He could faintly hear Sam and Dean speaking in urgent tones in the hallway and he turned his head towards them in the hope he would be able to pick out individual words. No-one had mentioned the fact that Dean was on his way with Leah until he was about twenty minutes away. Aliza had gone to work, but either this was Sam’s day off or he was choosing to stay at home. They had mostly avoided each other in the intervening hours: Castiel in the family room attempting to concentrate on a nature program whilst Sam did something very quietly in the kitchen. He wanted to get up and see Dean, to make sure that he really was here, but he also felt he owed the brothers some time for the whispered conversation they seemed to be having.

 

“...been through a lot, OK?” That was Sam’s voice.

 

There was a short pause and then Dean strode into the room, stopping two feet in front of Castiel as if he had hit a brick wall.

 

“Cas?”  he asked, voice breaking a little, perhaps at some sign that only Dean would be able to sense, some indication that must tell him that Castiel was no longer an Angel of the Lord.

 

Castiel was at a loss. His human, imperfect recollection of Dean had wholly failed to do justice to the brilliance of his presence, and yet, he also knew that his perception of Dean was lacking now that he could not see or feel his soul. For all that he had thought of Dean as he had made his way back to him, he had not considered what he would say when - if - he saw him again. Dean must have taken his silence as sign that something was amiss because he came forward and went to his knees before the chair Castiel sat in, entwining their hands together.

 

“Cas?” Dean asked again, more a soft query than a statement of fact, as if he was unsure who the being before him was. Perhaps he feared, as Castiel himself had feared, that he had been forgotten. But at that moment, for the first time since he Fell, Castiel saw all the pieces fall into place as he had been able to as an Angel: a hundred thousand actions coming together in one perfect moment, and he could feel instinctively that he was in the right place at the right time. Like a remembered tune, like the weave of a pattern pulled tight, he saw the endless possibility of kindness he held in his human hands and behold: it was good.

 

“I am here,” he said, and Dean pressed his forehead against their clasped hands. “I am here.”

 

**The End**

 

_When love beckons to you, follow him,_

_Though his ways are hard and steep._

_And when his wings enfold you yield to him,_

_Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you._

_And when he speaks to you believe in him,_

_Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden._

 

_For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you._

_Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning._

 

_Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself._

_He threshes you to make you naked._

_He sifts you to free you from your husks._

_He grinds you to whiteness._

_He kneads you until you are pliant;_

_And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast._

_All these things shall love do unto you_

_that you may know the secrets of your heart,_

_and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart._

_But if in your fear you would seek only_

_love's peace and love's pleasure,_

_Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing floor,_

_Into the seasonless world where you_

_shall laugh, but not all of your laughter,_

_and weep, but not all of your tears._

 

On Love (excerpt) - Kahlil Gibran

 

[image description: Dean looks out over a wide horizon: light spills over the edge and stars light up the sky. Massive soft, dark wings enclose the view. Art by oubliette_od.]  


[image description: Castiel walks over a light, starry background. His shadow is shaped as the countries he has crossed and the towering form of Blackchurch rock forms the background. Art by oubliette_od.]

**Author's Note:**

> Wow there’s a lot of poetry/quotes in this fic:
> 
>  _I’m tired of praising exotic flowers / I miss the village gardens; they were poor but ours_ \- a slight rephrase of a traditional Landay found here
> 
>  _Oh white giant with feet in chains / Oh dome of the world / Oh Mount Damāvand_ \- Damāvand (excerpt), by Mohammad Taqī Bahār
> 
>  _someone will remember us / I say / even in another time_ \- Sappho, translated by Anne Carson
> 
>  _Glory to Him who put our journey under our control, even though we have none over the events of our lives. Surely to Him we will be one day be returned_ \- paraphrase of a prayer said on Etihad airways
> 
>  _Every Angel is terror_ \- Duino Elegies – The First Elegy (excerpt), by Rainer Maria Rilke
> 
>  _Surely good deeds erased bad_ \- paraphrase of a quote from the Quran 11:114
> 
> I’m on Tumblr. Come squee with me.


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